God I miss when comments like this that succinctly draw deep parallels to history, pose hard questions for the readership, and do so via a literacy that is too often snubbed as elitist were always the top comment.
The original comment did stick out to me, but yours made me go back and re-read it in a fresh light. I appreciate that - you've turned a comment I would've skimmed over into something I will spend the next week thinking about.
I like how they mentioned Gilbreth instead of the arguably better-known Taylor - the one actually concerned with time -, lest the uneducated reader grasp the reference.
It seems like a good application of the technology to a real problem, it just sucks so much that the meta problem is so diabolical. Definitely a local optimisation far from the global.
I think it’s inevitable, but also not inevitably terrible
Firstly the slave driver thing. I understand there is evidence in Egyptian pyramids and chinese canal workers where the whip was a rota based position. If you are a group of canal workers you can get paid well to rope to a boat and drag it along the canal to get to market quicker.
And as it takes say a dozen fit young men to drag the boat, any one of them can shirk and still get paid. The whip was used by the workers themselves to punish shirkers, and ensure everyone was “pulling their weight”. Importantly you would need to be a skilled “puller” to work out who was shirking and who not.
(Please note I am not saying chattel slavery did not exist, that brutal punishments were made and violence used to keep slaves and workers under control. Just that in some cases the whip was a communal decision)
Me I hate timesheets. And I even have gone so far as to use my git commit logs as my own timesheets. I just see this as an extension of that.
We leave digital footprints everywhere. I expect a computer can pick up those footprints and provide me with a clear accurate description of my whole day.
I don’t think that is a bad thing. I can even imagine it being useful epidemiologically
But there is case for misuse. And that’s a different class of problem. It’s not ok to have delivery drivers think they need to pee in a bottle else they won’t hit their targets. But the measurement of a delivery driver around town is not the problem.
We've come so far since the slave driver with the bullwhip.